The last couple of weeks have seen easy puzzles but the ulterior thought was always, "when is the storm coming ?" It arrived.
This puzzle took a fair bit of work to get started, understand and then complete. No one will say it was their PB solving time.
And if today was your first DA puzzle, then cursed are you.

I listed the key answers and filled them in as I solved them so I could see the message sensibly. Then I solved as much as possible before the asterisk clues. I had most of the rubric and tried a few asterisk clues. They seemed odd but I knew some letters were changing. Until I got 1dn, I didn't know every letter did so.
The clues contain the grid answer, the transposed answer and wordplay.

Suffice to say, it was a brilliant bit of setting with not only 9 affected answers but 8 parts of the rubric all in the grid. No wonder we got such an unusual layout.

2 Also puzzled by wordplay as Ori(gen) is an early Christian philosopher. Very much corporeal.
31 Audit is not a homophone indicator. Even the addition of a question mark would make it barely passable as a clue. The best Chambers gives is as an obsolete definition for audience, hearing
22 Clearly a boo boo. Where are the editors?

The puzzle is essentially two puzzles with minimal connections through 8 and 30. Wouldn't pass grid construiction 101.
I think you have been overly generous in your assessment.

I didn't see an issue with the grid construction. Sure, it's unusual but it wasn't unfair.
Two halves were connected at only two points but there was some effort in making the puzzle work.
It's not like it's a regular occurrence (unlike DH who often has rubbish grids).

22d I don't think DA has made an error: BANJO is correct. "stop" = BAN; "Republican" (i.e. no king) is an instruction to delete "king" from "joking" to give JO. In other words, this is similar wordplay to how you get ORI in 7a.